We took in another great Anthony Michael Blowers’ Fall mushroom hunt and nature walk on Saturday. The weather in Southwest Michigan - although often eventful - was unusually impeccable last week — hot, blazing sun shiny late summer days, with cooler Fall nights and the first blush and breezes of Fall. A little on the drier side, that’s now all been rectified by a steady, drenching, non-stop deluge Mekong Delta-style for days, a September monsoon I’ve dubbed the rain apocalypse. No matter, as the sun always triumphantly returns and was shining bright for our mid-afternoon, Indian summer saunter, with several cool finds, great grinds, and good times available to all.
One of the best grinds personally tasted à la wild snacks were the Jelly Fungus Gummies – made with jelly mushrooms, candied with prickly pear cactus, this candied Jelly Fungus makes for a wild, mock gummy bear. Gelatinous with a fruitful, bubble gum favor, Jelly Fungus grows on logs and goes on quite a transformative journey from mossy woods to tantalizing taste buds in Anthony’s kitchen. An exceptional find was a reticulated Golden Yellow Bolete (Boletus Aureissimus), with its honey to bright yellow cap and golden flesh, pictured above, along with the cool, Opinel paring knife — “Older than your Great (Great) Grandparents — captured in a post workshop mini Q & A.
That great little exchange reminded me that many of the attendees at this workshop were first timers, inquiring as to former walks and finds as well as other Higher Haven Happenings. As threatened, I went way, way back, all the way back to our first Shroom Stroll in the Fall of 2018, when we first learned of the virtues of Trametes Versicolor, or Turkey Tail, the name derived from that mushroom’s resemblance to a wild Turkey’s back plumage. Along the path we found a half-dozen other journal entries, from the post-pandemic forest clearings we made on Spring Forages like the May 2020 Mushroom Hunt when we first collectively emerged from the initial lockdowns to the Summer 2020 gathering, when the Apple Bolete put on a group showing. Fall of 2020 included a Wild Forest to Table Dinner and we came together again for last year’s Thanksgiving gathering.
I added a walk from my own mid-Winter Arizona escape on the Sonoran Desert Floor that included sighting mushroom-like granite figurines, and finally brought it all back home to our Spring ’21 Morel Mushroom Hunt. As stated, these articles can be slightly meticulous, but are fun to write (and I hope read) as they combine Anthony’s knowledge with my research and, like a good Winter Count of old, tell some of the colorful tales of our burgeoning tribe. With many more stories and new Fall events to come, as drum sounds rise upon the air, it’s throb, my heart, a voice inside the beat says, ”I know you are tired but come. this is The Way” (Rumi)